


Evil Within

by MoonSilverSprite



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Agent As Unsub, Bank Robbery, Demons, Ghosts, Horror, Kidnapping, Medical Trauma, Past Child Abuse, Possession, Post-Season/Series 05, Serial Killers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:32:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22901008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonSilverSprite/pseuds/MoonSilverSprite
Summary: Jason Gideon never believed he would believe in demons or ghosts. But, as it turns out, Frank Breitkopf was a demon. A demon which has allowed seven dead serial killers to take over the bodies of his former colleagues. Frank had devised a vicious game where Gideon has to find and free his friends while the murderers in their bodies carry out more crimes.How successful will the killers be in causing more terror? As Gideon travels across country, profiling the ghosts inside his friends, he has to identify the murderer before an agent will be released. These men and women were desperate in life and even moreso in death.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

Jason Gideon thought that he was done with the BAU.

Jason Gideon had never believed in literal demons.

Jason Gideon’s beliefs were shattered for the second time one night in June 2010, while he was sitting in a drive-in movie theater shortly before midnight in a one-horse town in the middle of Ohio.

He had fallen asleep inside his car, as he had done on so many nights, after having worked as a janitor for the drive-in. A false name, a false identity. It was rather scary how many serial killers had done this.

How low he believed he had sunk.

He had woken to the sound of a branch tapping on his window. After three years on the road, Gideon was used to this, but he was certain that the car was parked by the projection room and not by any trees.

Then there was the sound of nails against a chalkboard. He sat up with a jolt, pushing his blanket off. His FBI instincts kicked in and he gazed around frantically.

There was a figure standing outside of the car. But he was too far away to have actually caused the noises. Or so Gideon believed.

The figure looked back at Gideon, gazing deep into the man’s eyes. He held his hands in his pockets as the wind blowing about him but the hair on his head remained the same. And even from this distance Gideon knew the figure’s name.

Frank Breitkopf.

“You always knew that monsters walked the Earth, Jason,” he held his head at an angle, smirking and showing those pretty whites, “But you only saw human monsters. That was why you quit, was it not?”

He dug his foot into the ground, as if stubbing out a cigarette.

“Except that the one that broke you was a real monster,” he came closer and the car door suddenly seemed to unlock and open all on its own, “One with the power to bring great misery once I got topside.”

“I’m dreaming,” Gideon scowled at Frank, addressing him rather than himself, “This is a dream.”

“I do not think so.” Frank answered with no emotion. He raised his right hand and at the same time, the doors to the projection room opened and a figure was pulled out, screaming like a banshee, along the ground.

Gideon recognized the projectionist, a film student from the nearby college. Gideon watched as the man was thrown up into the air, then down onto the corrugated iron fence with a sickening thud.

As the man landed on the fence, it folded like an accordion and made roughly the same noise. A loose nail flew from the air and hit the car window beside Gideon’s hand. The glass shattered and a piece hit the ex-profiler’s finger. Only a tiny cut along the side, but enough to tell Gideon that this was not a dream.

Staring back at the figure in just as much horror as he had done so while Frank had been alive, Gideon demanded, “What do you want?”

Frank lowered his hand and then picked up the projector – why was Gideon not surprised by this – and placed it on top of the car. With a broken window, Gideon knew he had no protection, no barrier against this evil.

“I wanted to know how far you can go, Jason,” Frank firmly replied, “You could never kill me. I was never alive.” He looked back with that same, cruel smile. “I was Frank and yet, not Frank. No, dear Jason. I am an abomination, even among demons.”

“Demons?” Gideon tried hard to stop his voice from shaking.

Frank shrugged. “This body belonged to one Frank Breitkopf. When he was born, that is. Parents wish for wealth and power and when the next boy in the family is born, when the boy is considered old enough, they have that body to wreck havoc.

“But some killers, mind, are human evil. Until they aren’t human any more, that is. And it will be seven of these human evils that you will battle, Jason. Their ghosts, mind. They’ve been dead for a long time. Years, decades, one several centuries. And which bodies do you think they will take for you to stop?”

Seven ghosts, seven bodies…

Gideon’s blood ran cold.

“You wouldn’t dare touch them –“

“Oh, I would!” Frank chuckled, stepping back from the car, “This is my game, Jason. These are my rules. I am aware that you have a notebook inside of your glove compartment. I would suggest that you be a profiler and try to put your skills to good use.”

Frank snapped his fingers and words appeared on the iron fence.

“Try to stop the ghosts yourself, preferably before they murder anyone, but this is not necessary. If they fail to kill anyone in their preferred way within forty-eight hours, they return to Hell anyway. Your only method of transport will be by car. Not just yours, but any car you can find. They’ll be using cars too. And the most important rule, Jason,” Frank faced him, “identify them by name and they will return to Hell. They will leave your fellow agents alone after then.”

He turned his back and started to walk away from Gideon. “They’re all at Quantico now. Already being possessed. I’ll send a live transmission. After that, you’re on your own. But I will give you locations once they make their first kill or attempted kill.”

“This can’t be happening,” Gideon murmured, running his hand down his face and gripping the passenger seat’s headrest, “You – you’re a demon?”

“We really blend into the crowd, don’t we, Jason?” Frank had turned around as a circle of tiny red flames encircled him, “See you when more innocent lives are taken.”

Then he held up a finger. “Oh, one more thing; here’s a few clues. Of the seven ghosts, only one is from before the twentieth century. Of the six that have lived in the last hundred years, one committed their murders up until the First World War, one in the 1930s, two in the 1950s. The other two are a little later. All of these people are in your serial killer textbooks, Jason. Have fun.” 

He disappeared once the flames engulfed him, leaving Gideon alone in his car.

Before Gideon could take any of this in – because _how_ could he believe any of this wasn’t just a dream, if not for the throbbing pain on his left little finger – he heard the sound of the projector whirring into life. Stepping out of the car so he could get a better look, he saw the bullpen on the screen, as seen from the webcam on the computer.

The team were sat around the table in the bullpen. Seven white orbs were floating in mid-air in front of them, being involuntarily sucked in as a dark shadow – Frank? – lingered in the doorway for the briefest of moments. As the seven orbs entered the bodies, the ghosts began to focus on where exactly they were, staring about and feeling their limbs.

“Well,” the ghost in Aaron’s body stood, his long legs wobbling as he tried to gain control of this form, “We better do what he said. Go and have fun.” He looked over this new body, impressed with the agent’s physical fitness. A tad older perhaps than the ghost had been when he had died, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

The ghost in JJ’s body had grabbed onto her blonde locks and flung them from her eyes. “This dame’s got a lot of hair,” she snorted in a loud Southern accent before pulling out JJ’s powder puff from the agent’s handbag and examining herself in the mirror, “But she is minxy. Whadaya think, fellas?”

“How is this dude even alive?” the ghost in Reid’s form felt the agent’s hands down his waist and held the fingers of one hand around his other wrist, stumbling to his feet like a baby giraffe, “At least I don’t look scary.”

The ghost in Morgan’s body chuckled slightly before placing his arms down on the table. He then said something in French, to Gideon’s surprise.

All of the other ghosts stared at him. “What did you say?” the ghost in JJ asked.

“He _said_ that he still resembles a buffoon,” the ghost in Rossi stood up, then grabbed at his throat suddenly, “Ah. I believe I recognize this voice. Hand me that mirror.” 

When the ghost saw Rossi’s face, he frowned for a second before slowly reaching up the profiler’s hand towards his face. “How time passes when you’re being burnt in Hell,” he murmured, “He has aged, but – those eyes are the same.”

“They always said your eyes were creepy,” the ghost in Reid’s form blew the doctor’s hair from his eyes and crossed his arms, appearing pleased, “But hey, we’re back up top. We gotta make our move. Have fun. Kill some sheilas and cause some mayhem.”

“That is not how I prefer to do things,” the ghost inside Penelope placed her hands on her hips, “Be silent and deadly. That’s how you get away with it for so long.” She started pulling Penelope’s hair up, held one of the technical analyst’s clips in her mouth and placed it in a bun. Grabbing the skirt and cleaning her fingers on it, the ghost grumbled. “The woman in here cries too much.”

“Speak for yourself,” the ghost inside Emily stood and stretched out her arms, running a hand through her long hair and glaring at it in disgust, “I’m a woman.”

“At least you’re more likely to catch them off guard this time,” the one in JJ’s body had taken Garcia’s other clip and started doing her hair up.

“I suggest that we all make a move,” the ghost in Aaron told the group, “We were given forty-eight hours to kill or we’ll go back to Hell. Remember, don’t get too frosted or the cops will notice. Don’t get carried away. Remember that we are not allowed to hurt these bodies. I don’t want to be in a big daddy with a Princeton cut but if I have a badge, I’m unassuming. Let’s go.”

When the footage stopped, Gideon frowned to himself. Grabbing a notebook from the glove compartment, he wrote down everything he had seen while it was fresh in his mind.

Seven ghosts. Five male, two female. He guessed that the French one was the most likely to have lived before the twentieth century. Then he focused again on the voices. The one in JJ had a slightly Southern accent and rather uneducated, whereas the one in Rossi had sounded educated. And very familiar…

The ghost had recognized Rossi. Rossi, at some point in his career, had met this man. This monster.

He had to think like Frank. How would Frank want to mock him?

He would select certain criminals to take over the team. In Hell, he would have learnt all about the criminals that had hurt the team. So, Gideon told himself, with that line of thinking, Frank would have chosen for Rossi a significant killer to the FBI. For Morgan, a child molester. For Reid, a criminal with either intelligence or good looks and charm.

The one in Garcia’s body had chosen to place her hair up in a bun. She had cleaned her hands on the dress like a cook on an apron. An Angel of Death, maybe? Either way, Gideon had her as the most likely candidate as being from prior to World War One, from the mannerisms if nothing else.

The slang also stood out to Gideon. Frosted, big daddy, minxy; these were all outdated slang words. Gideon wasn’t an expert, but he assumed that ‘getting too frosted’ meant getting angry. He hadn’t heard that phrase since he had been a kid, though.

The one inside Emily he knew the least about. But it had been a man that had targeted women.

Gideon had to move fast. But until any of them tried to kill someone, he was stuck. Frank hadn’t given him any more clues.

He had never felt so helpless. But he knew that the team were feeling just as helpless, trapped inside while some of the most brutal killers took over their bodies.

What Gideon didn’t know was that the jet had already taken off and was depositing some of the agents across the country. Others closer to Quantico were driving over New England.

There would be bloodshed before this was over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I _will_ get around to my _Supernatural_ and _Law & Order: Special Victims Unit_ story at some point, but I had to write this as well.
> 
> The story about Frank being a demon that took over a little boy's body comes from _Paranormal Activity_ as a possible reason as to why a demon wants a human boy.
> 
> Originally I was going to place Aileen Wuornos in JJ's body, but decided that none of the serial killers were to be those that have died in mine and my sister's lifetimes, although I will say that the execution date for the last one is pushing it rather close.
> 
> If you have any ideas on who might be in the team's bodies, go ahead and guess. They are all criminals that have been mentioned or had Unsubs based on them on the show, according to their wiki, (though that doesn't narrow it down) and each killer has a different preferred modus operandi or type of killer; spree killer, family annihilator, thrill killer, etc.
> 
> I am unsure as of yet when I shall next update, but I do hope that you enjoy this story.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> breather89: You read _Jekyll and Hyde_ once...
> 
> MoonSilverSprite: Ten years ago. I read the book _ten years ago_.
> 
> breather89: Good concept though, brother dear. You've been a bit tired lately; writing can put you out.
> 
> MoonSilverSprite: I'm probably the only kid who had his sister read her serial killer stories to them at bedtime. Why do you think I ended up like this?

**Chicago**

The kids playing inside the junkyard were not visible to the naked eye. The pile of broken down cars and old cardboard boxes was a perfect playground for inner-city kids with vandalized parks.

And the perfect place for a child predator.

Damien Washington and Mustafa Tawfeek were nine and ten years old respectively. They had been friends since they had met in pre-k and were now spending the summer vacation in the junkyard, away from parents or prying eyes. It had been just after dawn that the two of them had last been seen, minutes after arriving.

A ten-year-old witness to the crime, out of sight behind a car with no doors, told police that he saw a tall, bald man attempting to talk to the boys. It was clear that the man knew little English from his thick accent and hand gestures. But the boys eventually worked out that the man was offering them a meal.

The two boys were hesitant at first, but agreed. The witness had no clue why they would suddenly go off with a stranger. Maybe it was because there were two of them. Maybe it was because Damien was a rather heavyset boy. Maybe it was because both boys had missed lunch and couldn’t resist the opportunity for a hot meal.

The witness didn’t see the FBI badge that the man was holding.

Damien and Mustafa would be reported missing by their parents at noon, when they didn’t come home.

A reported break-in at a local crematorium was not believed to be connected. Why would it be? It was a different sort of crime, occurred several blocks from the junkyard and burglaries happened all the time in this area of Chicago.

If police had properly dusted for fingerprints, they would have found several on the crematorium itself, plastered all over the controls as a hand had fumbled and tried to work this strange device. Police would also have noticed that a coffin was missing, one big enough to shove two young boys into.

They would have found evidence of the two boys at the scene, namely Damien’s coat and shoes folded away into a cupboard and Mustafa’s clothes under a sink. The two families would have learnt what had happened to their loved ones.

But as it turned out, they never would. Damien and Mustafa would always remain as a cold case, a stain on the Chicago Police Department’s record.

The clothes would eventually be recovered, but thrown into a charity box instead of being handed to police. Even when the nametags would be identified and given to the police, it would have been weeks since either boy had last been seen, weeks while two families waited.

Two families that would never see their boys again.

**Pennsylvania**

A woman walked into a small town bank by the border with Virginia. She had her blonde hair up under a baseball cap, wore an FBI vest under her dress and showed her badge to a nearby security guard.

So when she screamed, “Stick your hands up, this is a robbery!” everyone immediately sank to the ground.

As the guard reached towards an alarm, she held the gun under his chin and bellowed in his face, “Do you want me to fill you with daylight? Hands on your head!”

She grabbed his coat collar with remarkable strength and flung him to the floor. She pointed the gun at the teller. “You, fill this bag.” She plonked a backpack on the desk and glared at him, waving the gun about. “And hurry! I don’t want the cops here!”

The teller fumbled with the key in the desk drawer, wondering if she should pick out dye packs. No, best not to anger the woman.

But if she knew when the ghost inside Agent Jareau had died, she wouldn’t have bothered with dye packs. They didn’t have then back then.

When the bag was filled, the woman looked up at the camera. Pointing at it with the gun, she looked down at the security guard. “You know how to get the film?”

“The film?” he asked, bewildered, hands on his head as he crouched in front of the four customers, all of whom were cowering and looking away from the bank robber.

The woman snarled. “That funny camera up there! You know how to hand over the film?”

The security guard nodded quickly. “Yeah.”

“Get it,” she snapped, “and I’ll know if you do. I hear about this with my description on the news, I’m comin’ back!”

The guard obeyed her, handing the disc over to her. The woman turned the disc over in her hand for a split second, staring at it with a mixture of fascination and confusion. But she shrugged and placed it inside the backpack.

“Y’all have been a great audience,” she smirked, arms outstretched either side, turning on her heel, “Goodnight!”

She took her shot.

Hitting the security guard between the eyes, the woman also hit the bank teller in the heart. The customers hadn’t seen her face. With the funny talkie disc, the woman was certain that she’d get away.

Sauntering out to the stolen automobile outside, she placed the bag under the passenger seat and got going.

**Washington D.C**

“Just one more picture,” he told himself as he stood – or rather, she, he kept telling himself – at the edge of the river.

This river was fascinating. Maybe he could discard his victims here. It certainly meant they would not be discovered in the desert like last time. But no, he had to abide by the rules. Maybe he could drive to the Appalachians.

How to get women this time, that was the sixty-four million dollar question. He had seen the magazines in a store back there. But he knew that no respectable woman would want to let a complete stranger take pictures of them, even if they seemed to be a female cop.

He felt out of place. He had a .44 revolver, not the .32 Browning he had used when he was alive. He had a frayed rope in the female cop’s bag, but he still felt useless.

Maybe he could try a different ruse. Everyone trusted a cop, didn’t they?

**Oregon**

The family were sitting, eating their picnic at a bench fifteen miles west of Portland, surrounded by lush fields and farms.

There were five of them; a man, a woman, a seventeen-year-old girl, fourteen-year-old boy and ten-year-old boy. Eating, drinking, laughing. A middle-class, low risk family enjoying a Saturday afternoon.

Unaware of the man watching them from a stolen car.

The ghost inhibiting Aaron Hotchner smirked as he rested the man’s long legs on the dashboard. This was perfect. He wished he had a partner again, but as he had said back at Quantico, this was an opportunity that he couldn’t miss.

He found the profiler’s suit unbearable. He dearly wished he had a leather jacket again, to look like James Dean, as all the other boys had done, but if he was to successfully trick people, he needed to look like a detective. It had certainly worked with this car’s original owner. Before the ghost had shot him six times (he would have done more, but this gun only contained up to six bullets) and left his body in a ditch.

The profiler was pleading with him. The ghost found this annoying more than anything else.

“I’m in control,” he had sneered, “It’s only temporary, fuzz. I never answer to anyone.”

“Which is why you ended up dead,” Aaron Hotchner reminded him, “You have no consideration for anyone else.”

The ghost smirked, looking down at the picture from Hotch’s wallet. “You got a sweet little rugrat, cop,” he held the picture up and stroked it, “Pretty doll, too. Heard she died. I’m sorry, I really am. But you’ve read about me. You know that I can kill kids when they get useless. Don’t worry; Frank said we couldn’t hurt our hosts’ families. But I could compensate. Find a sweet little girl or boy that age. How old is he? Ah yes, four. And then kill the kid’s folks, then the kid. If you stay quiet, I won’t have to.”

Aaron didn’t say anything. He simply watched as the ghost forced his body out of the car, hid the gun in its holster and made his way to the family.

**Ohio**

Gideon found Jennifer’s host almost immediately. The radio had crackled into life around noon by the interstate – was it Frank, Gideon wondered – and said that a young woman had robbed a bank in Monroeville.

That wasn’t far from where JJ had been brought up, Gideon told himself.

But then he heard Frank’s voice coming from the radio. Faint at first, but then louder, as the radio started to vibrate along with the car.

_“Wanna find tough guy Derek Morgan?”_ Frank gave a low snicker, _“He’s in Chicago. His old home. Of course, this isn’t his ghost’s old hunting grounds. Oh no, that’s on a different continent. He’s killed two boys already and if you don’t want Derek to be even more distraught than he already is, I’d suggest you better make a move.”_

Chicago. At least that was only four hours away. Everywhere else, aside from Pennsylvania, was further. But if Gideon could free Morgan, the profiler told himself after stealing the projectionist’s car (since this had intact windows) then maybe he could help.

If he didn’t feel the agony of murdering two young boys with his hands.

Remembering Carl Buford, Gideon tried to wonder about what sort of killer was inside the profiler’s body.

It was likely someone from before the twentieth century. Someone from a French-speaking region. From that one sentence the ghost had uttered, Gideon had heard a rather dignified accent. Someone with connections. That made it interesting; Gideon’s mind immediately went to Elizabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess of Hungary, who supposedly bathed in virgins’ blood.

Except that the ghost was French. And presumably male, since the ghost inside Rossi referred to them with male pronouns. But it must be someone as equally deprived.

He would be out of his comfort zone, Gideon reminded himself as he drove across Indiana highways. A rich Frenchman from a previous time would have had servants assist him in killing his victims, of any class or gender.

Something that had been interesting was that the ghost hadn’t seemed to react to the fact that he was now in a black man. In the past, outside of America at least, prejudice tended to be either you were rich or you weren’t, or Christian or whatever the dominant religion was or you weren’t. Depending on where exactly the ghost came from, he may have seen Morgan as exotic.

Which could have fueled his pride, Gideon reminded himself. So then, France. A child molester most likely. Someone with power. And very likely to have been someone from centuries ago.

This all niggled at the back of Gideon’s mind as he tried to think of a name. It all sounded familiar, but he needed to place the name. as soon as he had access to a computer, he would look it up. Frank hadn’t said anything about computers to double-check facts.

He wondered about the rest of the team. Where would they be? If they had all gone back to where the profilers had grown up, then it would be relatively easier to track them down. It still resembled a needle in a haystack, but at least this time Gideon had a magnet.

If this was also true, then it meant Gideon would be going to New York, Sacramento, Washington State and Las Vegas. He wasn't really sure about Emily, but he guessed not too far from Quantico.

Gideon just hoped that they would find them before it was too late. But he knew the chances. He knew his team. And he knew serial killers.

It was searching for the serial killers inside of his team that was the scariest part.

The ghost inside JJ looked at herself in the rearview mirror.

This body wasn’t bad-looking, as she had said herself back in Virginia. A good fighter as well, the ghost thought, pleased that she no longer had a lame leg.

When the ghost had stopped by the roadside for a drink (she couldn’t understand these weird twisty bottles so she had stopped off at a hamburger joint for a ‘cola’, as it was called) she had found herself looking inside JJ’s purse. Just as a matter of interest.

_Shucks,_ the ghost lipped JJ’s lip, _she’s got a kid._ She flipped the edge of the purse and saw a picture of Will standing by the fireplace at home. _And a guy._ Then she paused. _Why hasn’t she got a ring?_

JJ snapped back at the ghost, “Because we’re not married.”

The ghost frowned. “But the kid’s yours.”

JJ murmured in response, “We’re not married. Anyway, I would have thought you of all people would know that you don’t have to be married –“

“All right, already!” the ghost held JJ’s hands up for a fraction of a second before strumming her nails on the steering wheel. “I see we made the history books.”

“Not much chance of getting a good education where you grew up,” JJ reminded her, the profiler in her still active despite being trapped.

The ghost snorted. “You and me both.” Then she flipped open JJ’s FBI badge. “Your buzzer gets us into places, doll. Think big, get us some bucks.” She sighed. “You know, if things had been a little different, I bet we’d have been great friends.”

JJ mused for a second. “I think so, too.”

“If you weren’t young enough to be my granddaughter.”

Then JJ had an idea. “Maybe we should stop and get something to eat. No guns, no…violence. Just something healthy to eat. When’s the last time you had a square meal?”

“A what?”

“Healthy food. Not – not hamburgers or cola or anything like that. A salad, maybe? You can’t just have junk.” JJ felt as if she was talking to Henry. She missed him so much, but she knew that by her possessor staying away from him meant a lower chance of her little boy being hurt.

The ghost shrugged JJ’s shoulders. She unbuckled the seatbelt and got out of the car to walk up the highway. “Guide me. Do they still do soda fountains?”

“I said no pop.”

The ghost wielded JJ’s gun in the air, out of instinct if not anything else. “Who’s in charge?”

“Sorry,” JJ backed down, “Just don’t hurt anybody.”

In Chicago, boys were walking down a city block in twos and threes. Some were carrying skateboards, others were carrying phones. None of them noticed the man leaning back on a bench, hands on his knees, examining them closely.

The ghost in Morgan’s body had buttoned up his suit and had thrown on a shirt, stealing a pair of cufflinks and shining his shoes. It had been a very long time since he was on Earth, much longer than his fellow ghosts. He would have to try to look his best, even if it meant he actually stood out like a sore thumb.

He snarled when he saw the state of the city when he had left that metal flying wagon and took to the streets. He had not seen anywhere as filthy since he had been in battle. At least back then the peasantry were humble and pious; here they pranced about with their clothing hanging off their rear ends or with metal sticking out of their faces.

He frankly preferred Hell.

But, the ghost reminded himself, he had a job to do. Killing those boys had been satisfactory enough, but he could find more. When he had killed, the man he was possessing would not cease with his curses and his pleading.

Even before the ghost descended into Hell, he had been a ruthless and cold-hearted creature. He had not listened to pleas from his young victims. Why should he listen to this man?

Now the sun was at its highest in the sky and the ghost required some food. He had seen wheeled market stalls with people selling bread and meat. Spices, too, if this man’s nose worked as well as the ghost’s true form had done.

A meal fit for a knight, it seemed.

Gideon slowly approached around the corner, going at walking speed. He had guessed that the ghost would choose Morgan’s old neighborhood. The neighborhood where Carl Buford had struck. It would be poetic, in Frank’s opinion. The demon was possibly laughing at the mayhem this very second. After an hour of driving around, Gideon finally saw Morgan. Or at least, the ghost inhibiting Morgan.

He was right. The ghost had tried his best to look presentable, clothes neatly done up and not a mark on him. As the ghost awkwardly held a hotdog, wondering how he was supposed to eat this, Gideon exited the car and stood there.

The ghost stared at Gideon for a second, before Morgan’s eyes widened. Either Frank had told the killers who they were supposed to look out for, or the ghost had read Morgan’s memories. Either way, he broke into a run.

Gideon hadn’t run after a suspect in a long time, nor had he done any strenuous exercise in a while. But the old man still managed to chase after Morgan’s body.

Darting down an alleyway, the ghost found that he was trapped. He looked up at the wire fence, unsure if he should touch it. As soon as Gideon approached the entrance to the alleyway, the ghost turned Morgan’s body around, a smirk appearing on his face.

_“You are too late,”_ he snarled in French, _“I have already cut down two young lives.”_

_“I know,”_ Gideon replied, although his French was a little rusty, _“Frank told me.”_ He hoped that the translations he had done online were accurate. Even under normal circumstances he may have been talking gobbledygook.

The ghost held Morgan’s right arm on his hip, sauntering over. _“This man begs me not to kill. He – he feels upset when I hurt children. So then, Monsieur Gideon, have you named me?”_

Gideon held his head high, confident that he did know this fiend.

_“You were in the French army during the Hundred Years War,”_ the profiler began, crossing his arms defensively, _“You fought with Jeanne d’Arc at the Siege of Orleans in 1429.”_

The ghost seemed to become uncomfortable. Of course he would be, since Gideon was about to condemn him back to Hell. _"Stop!"_ he yelled.

Gideon carried on. _“A Marshal of France, you had a successful military career. But in 1432, this began to change. You tried to summon demons at the Chateau de Tiffanges, where you offered children for riches. In 1440, you kidnapped and murdered a cleric, catching the attention of the Bishop of Nantes. They found the bodies of forty of your victims. You burned the rest, so they were never found. You were executed on October 26th 1440._

_“I identify you, Gilles de Rais!”_

The ghost gave a shriek and made Morgan fall to his knees. Gideon was immediately concerned for his former colleague, but didn’t approach him just in case.

Then a white orb flew from Morgan’s throat and down into the ground. The smell of smoke lingered in the air for a few moments.

But all Gideon could think of was of Morgan. Running up to the younger man, he knelt down and looked him in the eye.

“Morgan? Morgan, you’re safe,” he tried to reassure him, “He’s gone; Gilles has gone.”

“Gideon –“ Morgan’s voice was hoarse, as if he had been crying. Maybe he was about to.

“Morgan,” Gideon held Morgan’s face in his hands, “that wasn’t you. You couldn’t have stopped him.”

“I –“ Morgan choked up, grabbing onto Gideon’s shirt, “He killed them. He made me watch.”

“I know, Morgan. I know.”

The two men held each other comfortingly for a few moments. The ghost had gone, but Morgan would remain haunted forever.

**Las Vegas**

A waitress placed her tray on a gambling table, taking away some empty glasses. The patrons didn’t pay her any attention. They were too absorbed in the game. Not that she cared. She had seen this before.

She began to walk towards the kitchens, but as she turned a corner she almost tripped over a satchel on the floor.

“Oh, I am sorry, miss,” a young man helped to hold her steady.

“It’s fine,” she tried to brush it off, but noticed what was in his hand, “FBI, huh?”

He gave a slight snigger and pulled some long hair behind his ear. “Yeah. Listen,” he peered at her nametag, “Serena, let me buy you a drink. To say sorry.”

“Okay,” she blushed, “I’ll finish my shift in a few minutes. How about then?”

“Of course.” He gave a little wave with his fingers as Serena turned around to go towards the kitchen.

When she had gone, he opened up the satchel and fingered the Polaroid camera inside. “Looks like we’re going to have some fun, Junior G-man.” He gave a low, raspy chuckle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually left out the worst of Gilles de Rais' crimes.
> 
> I wonder how many of you will be able to name the killers before Gideon saves his friends? I think JJ's is the easiest. If you happen to know anything about 1930s America, at any rate.
> 
> Here is a vocabulary for the slang words.
> 
> 'Fill you with daylight' - Shoot (1930s)  
> 'Fuzz' - police (1950s)  
> 'Big daddy' - Older man (1950s)  
> 'Doll' - woman  
> 'You and me both' - 'I agree' (1930s)  
> 'Buzzer' - Police badge (1930s)


	3. Chapter 3

**Pennsylvania**

She held the gun behind JJ’s back as she walked in.

Tucking it into her trousers (the ghost found it weird to wear what she had grown up thinking were men’s clothes) she stood by the counter. She was about to call the waitress over when she glanced up and saw the midday news. They were talking about the bank robberies.

The ghost walked out, scowling to herself. She didn’t want to get too cocky. Shooting up a bank was one thing, shooting up a hamburger joint was another.

“Sorry, Jennifer,” she smirked, “Looks like I’ll gonna have a little more fun.”

Gideon had had to fill the car with gas, but apart from that he hadn’t made a single stop driving to Pittsburgh.

It was now dark and he really wished that Frank had allowed him to use a train or a plane, even if he didn’t have a passport on him. He missed the BAU jet.

He missed all of them. He never would have believed that the only way he could see them again was freeing them from a supernatural evil. His friends. His six, dear friends. Learning that the ghosts had taken over Rossi, his oldest friend and perhaps most trusted colleague, had made Gideon’s blood boil.

Why had Frank chosen this elaborate game? Was it some cruel idea of fun? Is this what demons did for fun? How many massacres, even single murders or rapes, were actually demons enjoying themselves?

Gideon needed to focus. He was exhausted, having been awake for over twenty-four hours. He knew the risks it would cause to potential victims, but it would be no help to anyone if he was drowsy. As soon as he found JJ, Gideon vowed, he would go to sleep.

He’d sent Morgan on his way, on a train back to Quantico. He should arrive there by midday tomorrow. Hopefully some more of the agents would be rescued by then.

Gideon’s forehead started to sweat as he tried to think of who may be in Jennifer.

A bank robber, that was for certain. A bank robber from what may have been considered the golden age of bank robberies. When it was dramatized and robbers ran away in fast cars with bags bearing dollar signs and firing Tommy guns.

But the way the ghost inside JJ had held the powder puff and examined herself had suggested a female. A female bank robber was a rarity even today. At least as far as Gideon knew. He didn’t read the newspapers anymore.

Ma Baker came to mind. As did Bennie and Stella Dickson, but they didn’t seem right.

Then a wave of realization flooded through him. Maybe it was because he was a little tired. Maybe it was because he hadn’t thought about bank robbers in a while.

But he was certain he knew who had taken over Jennifer Jareau.

**Pennsylvania**

The woman stood in the shadows of the tall trees as the nearby bank began to close up for the night.

As she saw a female security guard walking past her, the robber pounced. She dug the pistol into her spine, just below the neck.

“I’d think it best if you do what I say, lady,” she grinned as she hissed into the victim’s ear, “Open the bank back up. Turn the cameras off. Then unload the bucks into my bag, got it?”

The guard swallowed. “The other bank employees need to come and unlock it with me; I’m sorry.”

The ghost groaned loudly, the noise echoing around her. “Well, lady, my gun has bullets in. And it’s on your backbone. So, if you still want a backbone, I’d suggest that you take me round to their houses and get them keys for me. Understand?”

“Put the gun down,” a firm, assertive voice sounded around them. The ghost looked over JJ’s shoulder and saw Gideon standing under a lamppost, arms folded.

She gave a ghastly smile before she sniggered into the guard’s ear, “It’s your lucky day,” and then pushed her towards the car park. As the guard ran, the ghost turned on JJ’s heel, the barrel of the gun still pointed in mid-air.

“I must warn you old-timer,” she stayed right where she was, but Gideon came closer, “I’m the best lady sharpshooter you could ever meet.”

“Old timer?” Gideon raised an almost invisible eyebrow. “I was born after you died. And I’d say that my colleague that you’re currently possessing is a good shot. Let her go; she’s innocent in all this.”

The ghost held the gun at a ninety degree angle, thankfully pointing away from Gideon. The profiler played his trump card.

“If you had never met him, you may not have gone on to carry out all of those crimes,” Gideon eyed JJ’s face carefully, looking for the ghost’s reaction, “You made yourself infamous by letting your heart rule your head.”

“Cram it, mister!” The ghost threatened, pointing the gun at Gideon with two shaking hands. Was it the ghost shaking or was it JJ? Gideon wasn’t sure.

“In the end, his life of crime became your life of crime and lead to your early deaths,” Gideon came closer, unafraid, “You weren’t even married. You were married to someone else. Do you want to know what happened to him? Because if you go out in a blaze of glory again, you’re going to leave another man wondering why his wife and the mother of his child seemed to have committed random acts of violence.”

“I said shut up!” But the ghost was now trembling.

Gideon came up to her, placed his hand on the gun and slowly lowered it. Looking into JJ’s eyes, he recited the famous poem.

“ _Someday they’ll go down together, and bury them side by side._ ”

The ghost sniffled and rubbed JJ’s left knuckle over the lower half of her face. “ _To a few it’s grief. To the law it’s relief._ ” She spoke the next two lines of her poem.

“ _But it’s death to Bonnie and Clyde._ ” Gideon finished. He let Bonnie lie on his chest as he held an arm around her back.

Bonnie dropped the gun and placed JJ’s hands over her eyes, weeping.

“I’m sorry, Bonnie Parker.”

A white orb flew out from JJ’s throat and down into the ground as the smell of smoke flew about them. Gideon let go of her and the younger profiler stood up straight.

“Gideon,” she breathed, “I – I want to say it’s good to see you.”

He nodded in return.

“I need to get some rest. Do you know where Bonnie put the car? Because I presume she stole a car.”

“Yeah, it’s a block away,” JJ answered, “I – oh – Gideon!” She was barely comprehensible. Perhaps Bonnie’s emotions were still present inside her.

Gideon reached out and took her hand in his. “We’re going to stop them all. I promise.”

But he had no clue where he should start.

**Motel in Maryland**

“Smile for the birdie! Aw, come on! Don’t look so sad! You looked so pretty when I picked you up; I thought you’d look like a model. Listen, I’ll take three more pictures and then we’ll stop for the night. Oh yeah, you can’t argue. I gagged you. I haven’t done this in a long time.”

**Pennsylvania**

The radio crackled into life as Gideon listened to it, lying down on the back seat with a blanket over his body. JJ had gone inside a gas station to get snacks and fill up the tank, but he was waiting for any news from Frank. Might as well do something while he fell asleep.

He finally heard Frank’s voice as he was drifting off. Had the demo waited for him to be drowsy and then annoy him? It sounded like Frank’s kind of thing. The demon was imitating a newscaster. “ _And a body was found outside Las Vegas at nine pm near the Moapa River Indian Reservation. The body was identified as that of nineteen-year-old Serena Delray, a waitress seen at a casino. Of course, Gideon, she’s not exactly going to be the last. Nationwide manhunt? Killings day by day? A killer devolving as he became more desperate? Come on, use your noggin! You remember this one!_ ”

Then the car was filled with the sound of radio static and cruel laughter.

**Long Island**

“It’s difficult to get back into a routine,” the ghost inside of David Rossi murmured as he stood over a newly-dug grave waiting for a body, “But it’s time to start up, wouldn’t you say?”

If Rossi could glare at the ghost, he would have done so by now. He had spent the better part of twenty-eight hours trying to persuade the ghost to do something else. Maybe it was because this killer in particular was one that had spent time with Rossi, maybe it was because he wanted to enjoy life again after so long, but this killer seemed to actually listen to the profiler.

The killer walked back to the car and sat in the driver’s seat.

“You aged, Rossi,” the killer glanced in the rearview mirror for the hundredth time since stealing a car, “You became an old man, while I haven’t had fresh air since I was thirty-three.”

“And whose fault was that?” Rossi sarcastically replied. The ghost snorted. Then Rossi tried again. “You got caught last time because you were tempted. Couldn’t you just enjoy the forty-eight hours you have free?”

“Whine, whine, whine,” the ghost lay back over the seat, his arms out on either side, “I am _sick_ of the _whining_!” He banged Rossi’s fists on either side of the steering wheel, breathing out heavily through the man’s nose.

Then he sat up again and ran Rossi’s hands over the profiler’s head. An automatic tick, Rossi supposed, as his body didn’t have the same curls that the killer had had while alive.

“You have no clue what Hell is like, Agent Rossi,” he gripped the man’s fingers around the steering wheel, “They told me, told me for fifteen years, ‘Hell’s where you’re going’.

They had placards up when I was being led to the chair. To tell you the truth, I was scared. I wondered, if there was something after, where I was going. Maybe I would be reborn, attack a new generation. But no. I ended up where everyone said I was going. So when I got this chance, I was overjoyed. I’m not going to waste any time.”

He paused. “You’re a Catholic, aren’t you, Dave? You said just as much when we first met.”

“I’m glad you remembered that,” Rossi muttered quietly, even though he knew the ghost would hear him.

“Fire and brimstone and eternal torture are the traditional expectations from religious paintings,” the ghost once again displayed his intelligence, “But Hell is different for every person. The worst you can possibly imagine might not be fire and torture. In fact, depending on what sort of person you are, you might actually enjoy that. Not me, of course. Killers – we usually get the sadness and desperation we gave our victims and their families mirrored back onto us, sending us into crippling despair. Now imagine that for the rest of time. _That’s_ Hell, Rossi. But if I do Frank some favours, killing when up here, he might put in a word for me. Let me have a little less doom and gloom.”

Rossi felt seething rage inside as he contemplated the idea of this killer being given a softer opportunity.

“Well,” the ghost started up the ignition, “I think we’d best get on with it. I’ll be kind, let you decide. I might find a girl that doesn’t look so well. Maybe someone sickly. That would be merciful, wouldn’t you agree?”

The ghost gave a horrid snicker as he drove the car along through the silent, dark roads. This car was a little rusty in his opinion. It wasn’t his dear Volkswagen bug, but this would easily get the girls in.

**San Francisco**

“Just a little more medicine, dear,” the ghost coaxed the patient to open her mouth, “Now, let’s get back to those documents, shall we?” She held a piece of paper in front of her.

“Just sign this cheque out to Penny and we’ll be all set.” She grinned at the doped-up woman. Were the drugs going to kill this old bat before the ghost used Penelope Garcia’s strong hands to strangle her?

Whatever the answer would be, the ghost was enjoying herself too much.


	4. Chapter 4

**Long Island**

JJ offered to drive Gideon to New York. He told her that she shouldn’t have to put herself through this, but she had scowled at him and retorted that she still needed to help her team.

“Morgan’s gone back to Quantico.” Gideon argued.

“Well, that’s Morgan,” JJ said, “He had a child molester controlling him. We’re going to New York. You need a rest and I need to get Bonnie’s voice from my head.”

Maybe being a mother had made JJ more decisive, Gideon wondered.

It was midday by the time the two of them had driven to Long Island. Neither of them had heard any news about possible killings, from Frank or otherwise, on the car radio. Even as they passed over the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge into Brooklyn, they kept an ear out for anything.

Maybe something had happened and Frank was staying mum for the moment, Gideon suggested, running a hand through his remaining hair as he spoke. He was exhausted and it wasn’t just from an erratic sleep pattern.

The idea that his friends were being used like this was horrendous. JJ hadn’t said anything about Bonnie shooting innocent people, but he guessed that she felt terrible.

Bonnie had been a trigger-happy thrill killer that fell in love with the wrong man. JJ may have been possessed by the most human of the serial killers. That could be why she seemed unaffected.

When they reached Brooklyn, the radio crackled to life.

 _“Hello, guys,”_ Frank’s cheery tones filled the car, _“Let me update you on how my little friends are doing.”_

“Well, that’s something,” Gideon muttered.

“I heard that, Jason,” Frank snarled, to the profilers’ surprise, “Here’s the latest.”

He cleared his throat.

_“Laura Huxley, 12, was reported missing by her parents early this morning at Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Friends heard her screaming when she was arriving. They said they saw a white car racing away from the park entrance. Laura is five foot five with long, straight brown hair, parted in the middle. Sound familiar, Jason?_

_“Going over to Washington, a twenty-two-year-old woman has disappeared after being seen at Highland Beach in Maryland. Roxane Elwes was last seen talking to a woman with dark hair, aged around forty years old. The woman had been seen at the beach earlier that day taking several photographs with a Polaroid camera. Oh, looks like she may have been at a motel in Riva. Except that no-one else knows, Jason._

_“An old bat by the name of Estelle Bone has just given a cheque of three thousand dollars into Penelope Garcia’s account from her nursing home in San Francisco. But the poor old dear is hours from death. Better work quickly because I truly don’t think Penny will survive in prison._

_“The Parks family were last seen outside of their house in Cornelius, Oregon sometime yesterday afternoon. Paige and Kenneth Parks, both forty-five, and their children, Lesley, 17, Terry, 14, and Conrad, 10, were held hostage in their house for eight hours before being shot. Conrad managed to survive as the bullet missed an artery. Lucky little bastard. He called 911 on the house phone and was taken to hospital. However, he is in no state to talk. He did say, however, that his abductor was heading towards Seattle._

_“A young woman has been abducted from a mall parking lot in Layton, Utah. Nikki Duncan, 19, was heard screaming and her car was found missing. Her body is currently stashed behind a motel in Riverside, Utah. Looky here; says that an electric current was passed through her feet with copper wire! I didn’t know the weed had it in him. Then again, he does have a ghost inside him that previously used intelligence and charm to make women do whatever he wanted._

_“Make your mind up, Jason, Jenny. You’re closest to David Rossi, but the killers inside Aaron and Spencer are devolving faster. And if you’re good and save little Laura, I’ll let you take a plane. Your plane, to be precise. Time’s a-ticking.”_

When Frank’s voice had ceased, JJ gripped the steering wheel tighter. “It’s a good thing Frank’s already dead,” she muttered under her breath.

Gideon placed his palm over his chin in thought. “We’re closest to Rossi. We just have to work out who’s in him.”

“The ghost in Rossi recognized him.” JJ thought aloud, “But Rossi’s met a lot of killers.”

“Did Bonnie give you any ideas?” Gideon asked.

JJ shook her head. “She didn’t say. I was too worried about how she was getting out of control.”

“Anything at all?” Gideon asked, “What happened on the jet? You did go on the jet, didn’t you?”

JJ nodded. “Me, Morgan, Penelope, Hotch, Rossi and Spence. Bonnie always wanted to fly in an ‘airplane’ so they took her first.”

When they had pulled over outside the park, JJ closed her eyes. “I – I need to think.” It was strange doing this technique on yourself, JJ mused.

Gideon clasped his hands in front and began talking. “What exactly do you remember on the jet?”

“It’s a little fuzzy,” JJ gave an instinctive chuckle, “I – I remember the ghost in Morgan – what was his name?”

“Gilles de Rais.”

“I remember Gilles being terrified. He swore loudly as well. I understand French, but Bonnie said she didn’t listen to that ‘foreign talk’ so she shut him out.”

“It’s okay,” Gideon spoke calmly and softly, “Tell me what you do see.”

The ghost inside Rossi kept looking at himself in JJ’s powder puff mirror. The ghost inside Hotch, who had been sitting opposite with his legs stretched over the seats, rolled his eyes.

“How vain are you?” he had raised an eyebrow.

The ghost in Rossi had just looked ahead and smiled. “I never expected I would ever become old. This guy, David Rossi, he’s about the same age as me. Came to see me in Florida on several occasions. Said that I’d made the wrong decisions. Said that I’d have been something great if I hadn’t gone down this path. Well, I’m sorry, Dave; I was made this way. You wrote the book. Literally,” the ghost held Rossi’s arms out on either side, almost poking Bonnie in the eye, “he helped co-author a psychology book on me.”

“A what?” the ghost inside Hotch had been confused.

The ghost inside Rossi had shrugged. “I wouldn’t have expected some hillbilly hick to know what I meant.”

“At least I could actually keep a lady.” The ghost inside Hotch had grumbled.

The ghost inside Reid was very quiet, staring out of the window. Sitting next to the ghost inside Penelope, he leaned closer and asked her, “You ever been in a plane?”

“No,” the ghost in Garcia had pushed her glasses up, “and it’s uncomfortable. You know, this girl acts like a child. She won’t stop sobbing.”

“At least you hear something,” he retorted, “This one just clamed up. I think I hear him pleading. The sheilas I took did the same, you know. But he’s a lot quieter and mumbles to himself.”

Bonnie had leaned over the table to look at Hotch’s body. “You sure you’re okay going by yourself?” she asked him. He had turned to face JJ.

Bonnie then pulled JJ’s loose hair behind her ear and remarked, “I know what it’s like losing a partner in crime.”

“At least you never went to prison,” the ghost had run a hand over Hotch’s hair, “No, I think I’ll be fine. Just raise some havoc. Not rob any banks. What are you gonna do with the bucks, anyway?”

“At this point Bonnie noticed I was listening and started arguing with me. Then the jet landed.” JJ looked back at Gideon. “Did that help?”

Gideon had written everything down in his notebook. “It’s more information than I had when I started,” he snapped it shut and pushed it into his pocket.

He frowned. “The ghost inside Reid – he mentioned ‘sheilas’ at Quantico. That’s an Australian term.”

“You sound surprised, Gideon,” JJ pointed out.

Gideon held his hands in front of him, looking down at the floor. “That’s because I’d have sworn the kid was possessed by –“

His voice broke off. Slowly raising his head, his eyes were wide.

“I know who’s in Rossi.”

Sitting cross-legged by the open grave, now coated in various branches and leaves, the ghost inside Rossi looked back at the girl inside the car.

He’d opened the door so when the time was right he could drag her out. When he’d heard her say that she was twelve, he had groaned inwardly. How was he supposed to know? Children were bigger now and she didn’t dress like any twelve-year-old he had ever seen.

Then again, he hadn’t seen any twelve-year-old girls in thirty years, so maybe this was normal for a city girl.

At present the girl was unconscious. When he’d used Rossi’s hand to drag her into the car, he’d handcuffed her to the bottom of the passenger seat and said that if she made a noise he’d shoot her between the eyes. He was certain that nobody had witnessed her abduction. Although the ghost hadn’t actually done anything to the girl yet – he couldn’t get in the mood with Rossi bickering and even swearing in Italian – he wanted her dead and out the way as soon as possible. The ghost had just knocked her out with a tree branch because she had started weeping.

He barely heard the car drive up along the path. But when he did, he ducked down inside the car, watching as he saw Gideon and JJ exit the vehicle.

Smirking to himself, the ghost considered his options. He had always thought on his feet. It was how he’d evaded police for so long.

Gideon knew this must be the place. Rossi had taken him here once after visiting the killer in Florida. Said that he couldn’t understand the man, even after all that Rossi had seen and read. The ghost would have chosen this as a suitable place to murder.

It turned out that Gideon was right.

“I know you’re here,” he called out, glimpsing the grave beside the car and approaching, JJ slowly making her way behind him as she held the gun, “I need to talk.”

The ghost in Rossi slowly stood and walked around the back. The way he seemed to swagger, confident and charming, looked out of place in the old profiler.

But the way he smiled, that cruel, cold smile was the same one from that infamous photo that everybody used.

“Hello, Gideon,” the ghost sounded eerily calm, “Great to see you.”

“I know it’s you,” Gideon narrowed his eyes, desperate to get that evil thing out from his oldest friend, “Is Laura still alive?”

“Yeah,” the ghost replied nonchalantly, as if this were of no importance, “Sadly. I haven’t actually killed anyone yet, but I can do so.”

He held up Rossi’s gun and took the safety off, pointing it presumably at the girl’s head.

JJ took the reins. “We know that you won’t shoot. It’s not in your MO.”

He snorted. “Who cares about MO anymore? Frank said that I could have somewhere better if I killed at least _one_ victim.”

“You don’t deserve it,” Gideon replied, angry, “Do you, Ted Bundy?”

The ghost scowled furiously, letting the gun drop to the floor. He let out a scream of anguish as a white orb flew from Rossi’s mouth and into the soil below, the smell of smoke floating around.

When Rossi gripped the back of the car, trying not to fall over, Gideon and JJ approached. JJ went around to check on Laura as Gideon supported his friend.

“It’s okay, Dave.” Gideon tried to reassure him, but Rossi was frowning intensely.

“That – bastard was inside me,” he gritted his teeth, “It was absolutely disgusting. I – I kept telling him not to hurt anyone. I kept screaming at him. I think – I’m certain that’s why he didn’t kill anyone.”

“You did what you could,” Gideon looked his friend in the eyes, glad to see him after so long, albeit under terrible circumstances.

“Laura’s fine,” JJ told the two men, “Just a small bump on her head. She’ll wake up soon, though.”

Gideon thought for a moment. He then instructed, “There’s a church around the corner. Say you found her wandering. Just knock and run.”

JJ nodded and carried the girl out of the car as she started to stir.

Gideon asked Rossi, “Do you want to go back to Virginia?”

“Maybe,” Rossi sighed, “I – he’s just as horrific as you’d think.” Then he saw Gideon’s puzzled expression. “What is it?”

Gideon sighed. “Intelligent, good looks, charm; I thought he’d have taken the kid.”

“But if Ted was in me,” Rossi let the words linger in the air, “Which killer is in Reid?”

**Rigby, Idaho**

Rachael was walking down the street as she went into the campground. She’d snuck out of the boring summer camp to go and get some burgers for the cabin. It was against regulation, but she was having a dull summer and she thought the other kids needed cheering up.

A red car with Nevada plates drew up in front of her as she was about to sneak through the wooden fence at the back.

“Hi,” a young man smiled at her, “can I talk to the counselors, please?”

She opened her mouth to say that he needed to use a different gate when he had exited the front and started pushing her towards the rear.

Rachael dropped the burgers, screaming at the top of her lungs. He clapped a hand over her mouth and pulled the gun from his holster, digging it under her jawbone. Rachael stopped struggling and went very quiet.

The ghost inside Reid grumbled, “Crikey, you’re a tough one. I like tough.” He leaned down and whispered into her ear as he pulled the trunk open.

“The two of us are gonna have some fun.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Maryland**

The car slowly drove over the bridge into Riva as the sun set.

Gideon had taken the wheel again, while JJ and Rossi sat in the back. Rossi had said that as soon as they got back to Washington then he would leave them and go to Quantico. He said that Morgan might need some support. Gideon knew that his friend had really meant that he wanted time alone so as not to think about possibly the most infamous serial killer of all time.

“You’re sure that Frank said this place?” Rossi finally spoke after what seemed like an eternity of driving in silence.

“Yeah,” JJ sat up in her seat, “The ghost that took over Emily has kidnapped a young woman and held her at a motel in Riva.”

“Well the forty-eight hours are almost up,” Gideon spoke more to himself than his friends, “If he hasn’t killed her already, Emily might be safe.”

“I doubt that,” JJ sighed, leaning her arm against the window, “What do we know about him?”

“He’s from the 1950s,” Gideon replied, “There are two killers from the 1950s. One’s in Hotch, the other must be in Emily. The one in Garcia acts like she’s from an earlier era and as for Reid, I doubt he’s even American. There aren’t any Australian killers from the Fifties that match the criteria.”

“You definitely haven’t changed, Jason,” Rossi managed his first smile since he had been freed, “So, the guy in Emily is from the Fifties, his victims were young women and took pictures of his victims, possibly before taking them.”

“We can’t rule out also taking them while he held them,” JJ pointed out, “We’re looking for an abductor. Now we need the ruse. In the Fifties, I’d gather that a guy would just walk up to a pretty lady and ask her questions. He may or may not have used a motel back then. He probably used a motel because he can’t use his home. The problem is, Gideon, that the ghost in Emily is the one we know the least about.”

“How about we try the others while we’re still driving?” Rossi asked, pushing himself up in his seat.

JJ frowned. “The ghost in Hotch used to kill with a partner and like you said Gideon, he’s from the Fifties.”

“Ted referred to the guy as ‘a hillbilly hick’,” Rossi murmured, “Maybe the South or Midwest.”

“We don’t know much about the actual massacre,” Gideon sighed, “If we did, we’d know if he was normally a family annihilator.”

“The ghost in Garcia is targeting old people for their money,” JJ frowned as she concentrated, “An Angel of Death sounds about right. The ghost might have been a nurse or some other caretaker. Perhaps she poisoned her family. A lot of female serial killers from back then did. Mary Ann Cotton killed as many as twenty family members in London in the late nineteenth century.”

“But this ghost is probably from the 1900s or 1910s; Frank said before World War One. JJ, do you have your phone on you?” Gideon asked.

“Yeah,” she replied.

“Look up women who poisoned people from that era. It could be a start.”

**Riva, Maryland**

The ghost inside Emily sat across from the woman in the back seat of the car, strumming Emily’s fingers across the open window.

He had no clue what to do. Sure, he enjoyed killing women – he was, as people both at the time and now would refer to him, a psychopath – but he wanted to spread out the torment over the forty-eight hours he had.

He’d held this young woman for that length of time, taking photographs on what Emily had called a ‘disposable camera’. But there was one more problem, quite an embarrassing one.

Since he was in a woman’s body, the ghost had no clue of what to do.

The hostage (Roxane, she’d said her name was) looked up at him from the floor of the car, hands and feet bound, eyes wide. She’d managed to work her gag off, much to the ghost’s dismay, but at least it got his mind off the agent and the impending doom.

“Please,” Roxane begged, “Don’t hurt me, miss.”

“I’m not your teacher,” the ghost retorted, “Don’t call me that.”

Roxane went on, tears streaming down her face. “My – my family will want to know where I am. Why? Why did you take those photos?”

The ghost let out a groan, one which sounded bizarre to him since it came from Emily’s mouth. “I took your picture because I wanted to.”

Exiting the car and looking in the rear-view mirror again, the ghost wondered if he should have taken one of Emily. She definitely had a classy chassis. He’d taken many pictures of pretty young ladies, both as his trophies and for his actual work as a photographer. But a headstrong lady cop instead of an over-excited girl in a large skirt was something different.

“Don’t,” he heard Emily tell him sharply, “Don’t do this.”

“I’ve had enough whinging from little miss priss over there; I don’t exactly need your moaning, Emily.” He groaned and leaned against the back of the car.

“You know,” he folded Emily’s arms and looked up at the stars, “you get a similar view from the Vallecito Mountains. I’d love to have gone back there. Maybe I will, one day.”

“One day?” Emily asked, bewildered.

He gave a short laugh. “Maybe when I’ve suffered enough in Hell then I’ll get the chance to live again. Maybe I’ll decide to go to the mountains and haunt it as a ghost. You have no clue how many unrecovered victims of serial killers are in beauty spots. Not just those from your time or mine, Emily.” He held one hand out, palm partly obscuring her view of the stars.

“A body is found at an archaeological dig. A Roman slave woman, a boy outside a pioneer town, a girl in a cellar from pre-Revolutionary times. The body is dug out and examined, shown in books and on television. But the woman has a broken cord around her neck. The boy’s skull is caved in. The girl’s hands and ankles are bound and a broken knife found under her clothes. Who is to say if they are the victim of an uncaught, unpunished serial killer that slipped away unnoticed? That the victim is one of five? Twelve? Twenty?

“Face it, Emily. Serial killers have been going on for as long as humanity has walked the Earth. It’s only been since jolly old Jack the Ripper that people have been interested in them. I was, let’s say a little early for the highlights, but from what I’ve heard from other killers down in Hell, people remember me.

“You walk over dead bodies every day. Victims from hundreds, sometimes thousands of years ago, buried deep beneath the surface. Under any old and tall tree might be a skeleton. Inside any old and tall tree might be a skeleton. When you’ve been in Hell as long as I was, you pick up on things from other murderers. Time’s almost up for me, Emily. So I’d better shoot.”

Emily tried with all of her might to stop the ghost in his tracks, but she couldn’t seem to control her body. All she knew was that the 44. Magnum was under the passenger seat and this ghost was going to kill Roxane.

She’d seen the time – 11.53pm. Just seven more minutes and she might be free.

“I can hear you, Emily.” The ghost snapped, recoiling her hand from the back door.

“Don’t,” she begged, “Don’t kill her. You’ve already killed enough women, Harvey; you don’t have to kill any more.”

“I don’t have to kill any more women?” he scoffed, almost cackling. “I want to!”

“Harvey!” Emily shouted, the sound echoing around them, “Stop!”

“I think so, too.” Gideon’s voice came from the pathway.

The ghost whipped around, looking out at where the profiler had been waiting in the shadows for the last few minutes, watching.

Emily felt her heart flutter with relief. Not only was Gideon here, but she had said the ghost’s name. Surely that was enough to identify him?

“I was a bit stuck on your name,” Gideon called out as he approached, “But Emily just gave me a clue.”

The ghost scowled. Pointing Emily’s finger at the agent, he let out a small yell of anger.

“I’ll see you in Hell!” he spat.

“You first,” the corner of Gideon’s lips curled for a fraction of a second, “Harvey Glatman.”

A white orb flew from Emily’s mouth and into the ground. She sank to her knees, breathing heavily. Gideon ran up to her as she turned her head to the back seat.

Gideon soothed Emily by telling her, “JJ and Rossi are getting her out. They’re going right now.”

Emily pulled herself up and saw her two friends about a hundred yards away, running over with Roxane towards the path.

“I just don’t know how to fix this.” She held a hand to her forehead.

“If you slip away,” Gideon explained, helping her back to his car, “If this car is never found.”

“Roxane,” Emily looked back over her shoulder, “She shouldn’t have to live with this.”

“I’m truly sorry, Emily,” Gideon sighed, “We need to.”

**San Francisco**

The ghost inside Garcia snarled as she looked at the old cow sitting limply in her chair. How long would it take for the woman to die? The poison must be taking effect – the ghost had no clue what any of the strange substances inside the house were, since in her day she had used arsenic, but she doubted that these were good for anybody’s vital organs – but how could a woman built like a bamboo cane be so slow at dying?

The ghost muttered to herself. It had been relatively easy at first. She had stolen a nurse’s uniform from a company that tended to old people stuck at home alone. She had introduced herself and looked after the woman that day. When she had given Estelle her medication, she had slipped a checkbook out and asked for three thousand dollars to go under Penelope’s name. The ghost had no idea how banks worked now, but she suspected that the money could be handed over.

It was a pity, really, that Penelope may go to prison. The woman had been sniffing like a child with the flu and her head was filled with useless trivia on moving pictures and fictional literature and whatever a computer was. In fact, there had been a lot of information about these ‘computers’. Information at her fingertips. Fascinating; maybe if she had been able to research more fast-acting poisons, then this would have been over quicker.

Penelope had taken over again, begging.

“Please, Amy, you don’t need to do this.”

Amy snorted. “Oh, do I, Penelope? You should learn to respect your elders.”

And Amy certainly could consider herself elderly. Unlike almost every serial killer in recorded history, she had made it to eighty-nine before dropping dead in an insane asylum in Connecticut in 1962, where she had resided for nearly forty years.

Old, vulnerable, alone. Just like her victims had been when she had swindled them out of money.

The problem with Angels of Mercy was that they couldn’t stop poisoning and then people would notice. Especially if the deaths were financially beneficial to the murderer.

That was how Amy had been caught. Sixty deaths in ten years, even if they were old and frail, drew attention. Her husband’s death in 1914 was the clincher and the only one she was ever convicted of committing. A police investigation showed how Amy would try to wheedle money from him. Shopkeepers would reveal that she had brought arsenic, supposedly for the rats.

Amy was sentenced to death in June 1917, but after an appeal the killer was sentenced to life imprisonment. Back then, life meant life.

Her story was turned into the play and film _Arsenic and Old Lace_. Not that Amy had seen them. She was shut away and died in misery. So when Frank had offered to take her out of Hell, she was overjoyed.

Now, listening to simpering Penelope made Amy’s hypothetical blood boil. This young woman was nothing like Amy had been. Amy considered herself to be sneaky, cruel and ready to trick and harm those she had control over. Penelope had a picture of a cat in her purse.

As Amy glumly looked over at the clock, counting the minutes to two am (since there was the time zone difference and would be roughly the same as midnight in Virginia), she wondered if she should simply beat the old bat to death to hurry this up.

As she stepped into the kitchen again to find something, anything that could help her, she didn’t notice the alarm beeping on Penelope’s phone. She’d forced Penelope to let her know how to set it, saying that she would target closer to Quantico if she didn’t. Of course, Amy had been lying.

But now Garcia’s body went still as Amy was dragged out by claws, hearing Frank’s voice in her ear.

_“You failed, Amy.”_

Once Garcia was free, she held a hand to her chest and gave quick, rapid breaths. Then she swallowed as she heard choking noises from the other room.

Amy had succeeded, only a few seconds too late.

Garcia sank to the floor, picked up her phone from her bag in trembling fingers and dialed the first one that came to mind.

When she heard Morgan’s voice on the other end, asking her, “Baby girl? Is – that you, Penny?” she let out a loud sob.

“I want to come home.”

**West of Billings, Montana**

Rachael sat nervously in the front seat as the guy that had taken her pointed out at the hikers. It was now just after dawn, after a terrifying night, day and another night in this car.

She had heard her name mentioned on the car radio. People had heard her screaming and glimpsed the car she was taken in. There hadn’t been a good description of her abductor, though. As far as she was aware, there was an AMBER Alert out for her in Idaho and she guessed possibly Montana as well since she had been taken near the border.

The guy had just brought breakfast and she devoured it in her hands. Now, he said, he was getting another girl and she was going to help him.

Or she would be dead.

“That one,” he told her, “Pretty blonde with the red scarf. Remember, say a word and you’re dead.”

He pushed her out quickly and grabbed her by the arm, the gun hidden in his holster underneath a jacket. Rachael had stopped trying to reason with him. The worst parts had been when he had locked her inside the trunk last night, bound with duct tape with the hood popped open.

She had seen him go outside in the pouring rain with his gun by his side, his long, spindly fingers twitching like crazy. He had seemed to be talking to himself. She couldn’t quite make out the words, but the guy had sounded furious one second and pleading the next. At one point he had placed his hands over his face and let out a howl.

That had scared Rachael even more than anything else. She wondered if he had that split personality thing – DID, that was what her mom’s true-life medical show had called it. It definitely seemed like it at some points; his voice had been confident and Australian at one point but quivering and American the next.

Right now though he was trying to make her take another victim. Maybe, Rachael told herself, if she did so then he would let her go.

Going up to the blonde – who couldn’t be more than a year older than her – Rachael asked in a loud voice, “Hey, could you please help us for a sec? We can’t find our way.”

The other hikers had started moving further up the trail by now. as soon as the blonde looked down at the map that Rachael was holding, the skinny guy had taken the gun out from under his jacket and then pushed it into the blonde’s cheek, placing her in a headlock.

“We’re gonna be quiet,” he snarled at her, and for a second Rachael saw that the man seemed uncertain. His voice certainly sounded aggressive, but the grip was loose on the gun and he seemed sad.

He paused, shook his head briefly, his hair flying about, then dug the pistol deeper into the blonde’s face. Rachael heard him mutter, “Do what I say or the bitches get it.” It didn’t sound as if he were talking to them, though.

 _I was right,_ Rachael felt a lump in her throat as the man half-dragged, half-pushed the blonde to the car and threw her into the trunk, _DID._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for not updating sooner, but I have been rather under the weather as of late.
> 
> I decided to write about Amy Archer-Gilligan since, although some of you may have heard of Harvey Glatman, she is almost completely unknown.
> 
> Don't worry; the murderers inside Hotch and Reid are more well-known.
> 
> I hope you have enjoyed the story so far and I will update as soon as I can.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, my apologies for not adding this chapter sooner. I have been a little under the weather.

The ghost looked out over the beach as he fiddled with the gun in Aaron’s hands.

Six victims in twenty-four hours. Even for him that was rather fast. The ghost drew Aaron’s legs up to his chest and rested his hand in the long grass. He’d spent the last day enjoying himself; going to a bar, having a few drinks and watching couples have sex on the beach. Even after fifty years it seemed as if young love made people do stupid things.

Like how Caril had done stupid things for him.

The ghost frowned as he thought about her. No, he firmly told himself, You need to focus on today. Try stalking another couple and rob them blind.

“Don’t, Charles,” Aaron reprimanded him again, “You’ve already killed people in the first forty-eight hours. You don’t need to kill anyone else.”

“Hey, daddy-o,” Charles gave a small smirk, which looked bizarre on Hotch’s face, “You want your kid to grow up? To have a pop? Shut it.”

“You need to wind down, Charles,” Aaron sternly replied, “You’ll get carried away and make a mistake. Just like you did fifty years ago.”

“Do you ever stop being grumpy?” Charles groaned, standing up and making his way down the cliff. As he did so, he saw a young couple getting out of a car. The guy held a picnic blanket under one arm, the girl a beach umbrella. They looked maybe about the same age Charles had been when he had first killed, around eighteen to twenty years old. Strangely enough, they were the first young people he had seen since this whole thing had started not to be looking at those television phones that they all appeared to hold.

“Excuse me,” Charles asked as he approached the couple, who held their hands up so as not to get the early morning sun in their eyes, “Could I please have some help?”

He held Aaron’s badge out for them to see. The two looked at each other before the guy asked, “How can we help, officer?”

Quick as a flash, Charles had Aaron’s gun out from under his jacket and aimed it at them. The girl gave a short, sharp scream and held her hands up. The boy cried out, “Take whatever you want!”

“Oh, I will.”

It was certainly a relief to use the jet.

JJ and Emily sat in the seats, while Gideon lay on the couch and tried to concentrate. Emily had barely said a word since she had been rescued. JJ guessed that her friend was probably thinking about Harvey using that young woman. She wondered if that was worse than Bonnie shooting up the banks.

Rossi had chosen to stay at Quantico, to man the controls as he had said. Gideon knew that he had really meant that he wanted to get Bundy out of his brain.

As soon as they had stepped on the jet, JJ got a call that Garcia had been freed. Apparently, the ghost inside her hadn’t been successful in killing anybody. Until the time limit had run out, at least. They were picking her up now on their way to Seattle.

“Do I have to come?” she had complained when JJ had finally gotten her to calm down, “This – this ghost framed me for murder and extortion! Well, technically, I did kill that kind old lady, but I’m running around in circles –“

“Garcia,” JJ interrupted, trying to reassure her, “Just hack into the banking system. I don’t think anyone has actually read the check yet. I’ll tell Rossi and Morgan and they can get it bounced or do something that will mean you won’t be wanted.”

“Oh. Okay.” Penelope sighed. “But what about everyone else? You’ve all killed people. And – and I saw what I think my Junior G-man is doing and my word, it makes my blood boil to think of what that Unsub is forcing him!”

“We can think about that later,” Emily finally piped up, “We just need to find Reid and Hotch first.”

“Right. Over and out.”

Emily looked over her shoulder at Gideon. “How are you?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” he mumbled, his thumbs pressed against his lips as he stared into space, thinking.

Emily knew that he very likely was not.

As the jet landed north of Portland, by the Washington-Oregon border, Gideon made a call to the Cornelius police department. JJ and Emily didn’t hear much of the conversation, but they guessed that he was asking about the Parks homicide.

He nodded, saying thanks and ending the call. Walking out of the jet with JJ and Emily, he told them, “The Cornelius police also have an unsolved murder from the day before. A man was killed for his car. The description matches Aaron. Actually, it describes the ghost _inside_ Aaron, but it’s a start.”

“So would this ghost normally be a family annihilator?” Emily asked.

“Not entirely sure,” Gideon thought carefully, “He’s from the Fifties and likely the flyover states, we know that.”

Garcia, having been very quiet since they had picked her up in San Francisco. She had said that she wanted to stay on the jet and use a laptop, which she had been tapping for the last several minutes in search for the ghost’s identity. Despite the circumstances, Gideon couldn’t help but admire her dedication.

He really had taken his team for granted. Gideon had wanted to try and contact them again on several occasions, but had always fallen short of actually doing so, too nervous in case of how they reacted.

“Should I try and take a look, sir?” Garcia asked from the door. Gideon was shaken from his thoughts and he looked over his shoulder as he was about to descend the steps.

“It’s a start.” he replied, hands in his pockets and looking out over the nearby roads. They just needed to find Hotch before the ghost inside him killed any more victims.

**Battle Ground, Washington**

The ghost was now sitting on some tarmac beside the road that led out of Battle Ground. He was bored now, his thirst for killing having worn off.

This was when spree killers got the most dangerous, it seemed. They would do anything for more excitement, for more anger. Hotch knew that whatever he said, Charles would ignore him. The boy had ignored everyone and that was what turned him into a killer with no respect for anyone else.

“Those two lovebirds didn’t half scream,” Charles fiddled with Hotch’s gun for what seemed like the umpteenth time, “Maybe I should have waited longer.”

Hotch didn’t answer. He had felt useless, having been possessed by a spree killer for the last two and a half days. He had heard what appeared to be radio static inside his head. It had taken him some time to work out that it had been Frank talking to Charles, telling him whenever a colleague had been freed. If Hotch was right, it was just him and Reid left that needed to be rescued.

If Hotch could have slumped down with mental exhaustion, he would have done. He felt terrible and knew that he had seen Charles do terrible things.

Hotch wondered if this ghost would stop. It seemed very unlikely that he would.

It seemed as if there was some good luck heading towards the team’s way.

Garcia had compiled the clues together. She had started off by looking at killers who had been active in the 1950s, then narrowed that down to connections to the South or Midwest. She had also looked at age, since not only had Gideon been able to guess that the ghost inside Hotch had been rather young when he died but the inconsistency of the nature of the crimes and the level of overkill on the Park autopsies suggested either a devolving killer or a young killer. Now, she had a name.

“It does seem to fit,” she called out on the speaker as the three agents drove – in yet another ‘borrowed’ vehicle, to their dismay – towards Seattle, “Charles Starkweather, killed eleven people, including a two-year-old girl, over a period of just under two months in 1957 and 1958 in Nebraska.”

“Inspiration for _Natural Born Killers_.” Gideon murmured to himself, a chill running down his spine. Frank had chosen well.

“That’s all well and good, but where is Hotch?” JJ had asked.

“Ah,” Garcia sounded uneasy, “I think I might have something. A young couple were abducted from Seaside in Oregon early this morning. Eighteen-year-old Duncan Wallace and nineteen-year-old Paige Kidd were supposedly taken by a man matching Hotch. Duncan was found, barely alive, by a police car monitoring the speed limit outside Battle Ground in Washington about fifteen minutes ago. Paige is dead.”

Gideon licked his lips in concentration. “Charles should be close by. Turn the car around.”

**Cherry Grove, Washington**

Charles hadn’t even bothered with the fed outfit anymore.

He had pulled Hotch’s tie out and taken his jacket off. The ghost had undone the top button on his shirt and untucked it. Sitting by the East Fork Lewis River, he threw a stone across the shallow water, bored.

When he had been walking up this road, the ghost had noticed a squad car and heard the policemen talking inside, looking in his direction.

The feds might find him soon. Frank might find him before then.

Charles had wanted to go back up to Earth ever since his execution in 1959, aged only twenty years old. He had wanted to carry on causing havoc. But he didn’t know why he now felt like this.

“Hello,” he heard a voice from behind him, “I need Aaron back.”

Charles smirked. Slowly, he stood up, the gun still in Hotch’s hand.

“I wondered when you’d come by, pig.” Hotch’s fingers twitched on the trigger. Charles was devolving fast.

Gideon knew that he had to be quick.

“Playtime’s over,” he frowned, “Give him up.”

“You need to say my name to let your friend go. Why haven’t you done that yet?” Charles sounded cocky, but both of them – and Hotch – knew what he was really going through. “Is it because you want to talk to me and not him?”

“You could have gotten help,” Gideon responded, “if you had lived today. Maybe it would have stopped you, maybe not.”

“People admire guys like me,” Charles turned around, still retaining his smile, “Aaron told me. They like violent boys. Kids that fight the system. Attractive, young guys that kill. Groupies and changing laws and anger. Aaron said it was everywhere.”

“People who like guys like you are idiots,” Gideon looked him in the eye, “Violence, arguments, hating something because it doesn’t fit with your views or comes from another generation; it’s never right.”

Before the ghost could say another word, Gideon took his shot. “Charles Starkweather.”

The ghost scowled, utter fury burning through him as Gideon caught the smell of smoke. A white orb flew from Hotch’s mouth and into the ground.

Hotch tripped. Perhaps from exhaustion, but perhaps from the effects of being possessed. Whatever the reason, he fell into the older man’s arms, worn out.

“Gideon,” Hotch could barely whisper, “I’m so sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Gideon reassured him, “Come on. We need to go now.”

JJ and Emily were standing by the road when Garcia called back.

“Guys, I think I know who’s in Reid,” she sounded terrified, “I had a look at the clues. It was the ‘sheila’ that really confused me, since there weren’t any Aussie killers that seemed to match. But it actually helped to identify the ghost –“

“Garcia,” Emily interrupted.

“Oh. Sorry.” Garcia cleared her throat. “I think – and you’re not going to like this – I think the ghost in Reid is Christopher Wilder.”

Emily and JJ’s eyes widened.

“Are you certain?” JJ had gone pale.

“Yeah,” Garcia’s voice croaked, “Spree killer who killed young women while posing as a photographer, using his charm? Aussie that came to Florida and worked as an estate agent? Kidnapped a girl on his cross-country spree and forced her to help him in taking another victim? Committed suicide by cop when he was cornered at the border, leaving several cold cases open and no answers for the families of his victims? I’m certain he’s in Reid.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that it has taken so long to post this chapter. I couldn't work out how to end the story. Anyway, I _will_ get my crossover up as soon as I finish it. I'm planning on writing it all at once and then posting the chapters up day by day and not have to rush like I did with this one.
> 
> My sister, breather89, is planning on writing a crossover between _Supernatural_ and _House M.D,_ on her FanFiction account, but like my story, it's stuck. Also she feels slightly uncomfortable about writing a story set in a hospital when there's a global pandemic. Even though it's not a disease killing people, but a Frankenstein witch doctor. (She's going to be cross that I spoiled it.)
> 
> Anyway, I've finally finished the story that was fueled by inspiration from the fanfic 'All Fun and Drinking Games' and the _Jekyll and Hyde_ book and musical, the amazing soundtrack of which I listened to while writing this.
> 
> I hope that the identities weren't too hard for you to guess. Tell me in the review section if you got any of them right or wrong. Thank you to everybody who enjoyed this story.

Christopher had been in the fed for nearly seventy-two hours. He had used the fed’s spindly hands to strangle three victims and now he had a fourth driving the car for him.

But Christopher wasn’t finished. He was itching to pull a trigger, to take out the old fed that Frank said was coming for him.

He had died before anyone could profile him in a prison cell. If they had, perhaps things would have been different. But Christopher didn’t want to end up in prison, on Death Row with court meetings and arguments.

Oh, no.

He didn’t want up be like Bundy, to have people bickering over him. Maybe, if Christopher had chosen to live, he would have been as well-known as Bundy.

The fed had pleaded at first, when Christopher had first taken over this skinny rake. But after a while he had grown quiet. When Christopher had approached Serena in the parking lot and pushed the gun onto her neck, he swore that he heard the kid mumbling to himself.

Christopher had asked what it was, while the car was resting by a Nevada highway with Serena’s dead body thrown out into the sands. The kid had said something about scripture. Then he had said something about an angel. The words ‘please’, ‘don’t’ and ‘angel’ were spoken so often that Christopher wondered if something was wrong with the fed.

After prying into the guy’s brain, Christopher had focused on specific events. One had almost literally leapt out at him and then he had realized.

This guy had actually died, before being brought back to life by his abductor and torturer.

A tad more curious, Christopher had looked into that event. The murderer in this case – a Tobias Hankel – wasn’t to his interest. Different methods of killing. Besides, it seemed as if Tobias had been a loony.

This kid, Christopher reminded himself, was just like his own victims. Aside from the fact that the fed was a guy and hadn’t been sexually assaulted, his mind was as addled and in pieces just as much as Christopher’s surviving victims must have been, at least at first.

That had peeked Christopher’s interest. He felt a small pang of sympathy. Maybe this fed was sharing his emotions. Maybe not. But he told the kid to ‘close his eyes if he could’. To not see what Christopher was doing.

When he had taken Rachael, however, the fed woke up. Christopher had gone into the rain that was pouring down the Montana mountainside. It was bad enough that Christopher had chosen to make this girl get victims for him; he didn’t want her thinking he was that type of insane.

He had snapped that he was doing this his way. That the fed could go home after this.

But Christopher knew that history would repeat itself if the old fed got in the way.

“Right,” Gideon addressed Garcia as the jet flew over Idaho, “any updates on the whereabouts of missing Rachael?”

“Not really,” Garcia was tapping away at the laptop, “No, wait a minute. A woman matching Rachael’s description just walked into a police station in Bowbells in North Dakota.”

As Garcia brought up the map, Gideon took a good look. “Close to the border. It’s just what I feared.”

“So, where should we go?” JJ asked, sitting across from them. Hotch and Emily were on the couch, as the woman carefully listened to her colleague. Nobody else wished to interrupt them.

“Try Bowbells,” Gideon suggested, “Try and see if we can get something from her. We also need to look at nearby border crossings. Frank said that they were to re-enact their crimes. If this goes the way I think it will, Christopher’s heading to a known crossing.”

“But we haven’t been authorised to come here,” JJ folded her arms, “That’s going to be difficult.”

“We can get to them,” Gideon promised, “Last time I was at Bowbells was back in ’97. But I’m pretty sure that the same officers are still there. I do know how to use the internet, you know.”

As it turned out, Rachael was more helpful than she realized.

When she had been forced to drag that young woman – seventeen-year-old Renee Clarkson – out into a forest near Williston, North Dakota, she had taken another look at her kidnapper.

It had been about midday when he had made her stop the car. Rachael had been forced to listen to Renee’s muted sobs in the back seat as their kidnapper had hurt her. At times he would stop what he was doing and mutter under his breath. Sometimes he would shout “Shut up!” at someone that wasn’t there.

Rachael had wondered what the chances were of surviving a murderer with DID. Probably not too high.

When the kidnapper had made her stop on a dirt road and help him to drag Renee out – hands, feet and mouth all tied with duct tape, her face red from crying – he had been holding the gun as he held it close to the side of his head, mumbling again. This time he was furious. He kept turning about a few times, snarling and saying things such as “I’m in control, fed.”

Then he had tried to shoot Renee several times. He kept missing because his hand slipped or pulled away at the last second, each followed by a scream of fury. Then he knelt down in front of Renee and shot at point blank range.

Storming back to the car, he shouted at Rachael to follow him. She was certain he had run out of bullets in that gun, but she was still petrified.

After sitting next to him the passenger seat, her eyes never left him once as he drove north. He wiped his nose and mouth, sniffing as he did so, sweat sticking to his forehead. Once they had arrived outside a construction site after about an hour, he pulled out a twenty from a wallet in the glove-box and slapped it into her hand.

“Get a cab,” he told her, pausing slightly between each word, “Get to the cops. Get out of here.”

She paused, wondering if he was tricking her. But then his face seemed to change abruptly. He seemed comforting, desperate, pleading.  
“Please, just do what he says, Rachael.”

She didn’t have to be told again. She exited the car and ran up to the site, screaming at the top of her lungs.

“And that was when he drove off?” JJ asked Rachael as she sat across from her in Bowbells police station.

Rachael nodded, wiping her nose on her sleeve.

“Listen,” JJ looked her in the eyes, “You’re being a very brave girl. You survived and that’s all that matters. Do – do you think you could tell me where he was going?”

Rachael blinked a few times before she responded, “He said something in my ear before we stopped. It didn’t make any sense.

“Try me,” JJ told her.

Rachael took a deep breath. “He said ‘tell the old fed to meet me alone at Northgate, or he’ll never see the kid again.’”

Gideon knew that he had to go and see him.

The police car that he asked to borrow, saying that it was an emergency and only he had to go (his officer friend had no idea what he meant, but Gideon lied and said that he had FBI backup), stopped far away enough to the Northgate toll that he could see it from a distance.

Walking up, Gideon could see a car parked some way off, beside a chain-link fence around a hundred yards from the toll booths. He could see someone standing beside the car, hands in his pockets.

Christopher in Reid’s body.

As Gideon nervously approached, he swore that he could see a cocky smile on the young profiler’s face. Or rather, the madman inside of him was smiling.

When Gideon had already made his way over to the car, he noticed the ghost took Reid’s hand out from his pocket and had grabbed onto his gun. Despite having been out of the FBI for three years now, Gideon’s instincts were still intact and he dived behind the car.

Hearing the ghost run away, Gideon quickly worked out the killer’s plan. Stay far away enough so that he couldn’t hear Gideon call out his name, but get close enough to shoot Gideon before he had the chance. Either that or he was going to repeat history and take the kid down with him.

The skies darkened as Gideon carefully lifted himself up from the ground and saw Reid’s body trying to get through the maze of parked cars behind the fence. He had some trouble getting into a sprint though; he kept stopping every three or four cars to lean against a vehicle, sometimes rubbing his leg. Had Reid been injured on the job? Or was he taking control again of his body? Maybe it was a little of both.

Ignoring the torrent of rain crashing down around him, Gideon raced to the fence and saw the large hole that Christopher had most likely made beforehand. After Gideon had gone through, he looked from left to right, wondering exactly where the ghost was hiding. The sounds of gunshots would soon alert the border guards and he needed to get the ghost before it was too late.

Seeing Reid’s skinny frame make its way to a tree with low-hanging branches, Gideon noticed that the young profiler’s left hand had gripped onto a car mirror. His body had still been running so he ended up slipping to the ground.

Gideon heard Reid – and he could tell that voice anywhere, so he knew his colleague was in control, if just for a brief moment – shout, “No!” and try to latch onto the car. But the ghost took over, bashing Reid’s fingers with the barrel of the gun and forcing himself up.

Gideon had wondered why Frank had allowed the ghosts to have two days on Earth. Why not three, the golden number? Or indefinitely?

Perhaps, he wondered, after forty-eight hours the possessed begin to take back control. Or at least enough control to try and stop them.

The ghost had made his way into the cluster of trees behind a thankfully empty souvenir shop built like a log cabin. The fence behind it would have made it rather tricky to move through, but Gideon guessed that this was Christopher’s first try. Ducking beneath an overgrown hedge, he watched as the ghost, confused, stopped and looked around, before going back out to the cars. Gideon watched as he stood out on the concrete in the pouring rain, Reid’s fingers twitching around the trigger.

“You want me, cop?” Christopher flung Reid’s right arm out to the side, stretching as far as it would go. Twisting around on Reid’s heels, the ghost smirked horribly, a look that seemed very out of place on the young genius. Reid’s wet hair lay flat against his forehead. “I still have a hostage.”

“Do you really want to give up another life?” Gideon’s voice came from behind the cabin. The ghost held the gun in that direction. The old profiler carried on. “You killed so many. You killed on more than one continent, of that I am sure. I think that we’ll never know how many women you murdered.”

“Shut up!” the ghost yelled as the hand holding the gun shook, “You don’t know anything about me!”

Gideon gave a chuckle. “It’s been twenty-five years. Your case is in the FBI handbooks. Maybe, maybe if we’d caught you then we’d have learnt a lot more. Do you know who does this sort of thing? Who kills innocents that can’t defend themselves? A coward.

“Some serial killers do what they do because they see it as defending themselves. Some get caught up in the feeling of rush. Some think they are being guided by God. But remember what I say, Christopher; every person on this Earth is different and reacts in different ways. There is no ‘set’ serial killer or serial killer type.

“But after hours and days of reading up about you has made me certain, Christopher Wilder, that you are nothing but a coward!”

The killer let out a horrible, ear-piercing scream and dropped the gun as Reid’s body sank to his knees and a white orb flew out and into the ground.

Gideon was about to go over and comfort the boy when he saw a white flash in his eyes. For a second he thought that lightning had struck. But then he heard Frank’s voice.

_“Well, you did better than I thought you would, Jason. It’s actually satisfying.”_

“You call killing thirteen people and leaving five others – including two children – traumatized for life ‘satisfactory’?” Gideon felt like he wanted to explode with anger. “You used my skills for fun. These are cases that families will never receive closure for.”

 _“And it was riveting entertainment; we couldn’t stop laughing,”_ Frank’s voice replied. Gideon didn’t see him but he could guess that Frank was grinning. _“Good news for you is because of my little game, the BAU are hands-off for any demons. Them’s the rules, Jason. Only one go. But the good news for me –“_

Gideon felt fiery breath on his face, knowing that Frank, in some way, was right in front of him.

_“– I’ll be seeing you very soon, Jason.”_

When the light had gone, Gideon tried to regain his bearings. After a few seconds of standing there, he quickly paced over to Reid, who was gabbling away at a hundred kilometers an hour, his voice hoarse.

“I tried – I tried, Gideon. I tried.” Reid was sobbing into Gideon’s shirt. Gideon looked around, wondering if the border guards would come by soon. He could definitely hear splashing in the mud outside.

“Spencer, Spencer, it’s okay,” Gideon held his hand in the young man’s hair and held him close, even though he had no clue what else to say to even begin to try and comfort him, “But we need to get out of here.”

Gideon drove Reid back to the station. As soon as he saw Hotch, the boy headed over and buried his face into the older man’s chest. Hotch blinked a couple of times and then tried to hold Reid’s wet body close.

After Gideon had quickly muttered something to Hotch about the BAU now being safe from demons, he walked out into the rain. Hotch saw, through the window, the old man get into the car that Christopher had stolen and drove off into the mist.

It was the last time he would ever see Jason Gideon.

**Five Years Later**

So this was where you went.

Maybe it was endless hours of listening to Dave’s religious upbringing, but Gideon hadn’t expected a giant grey stone archway inside the Quantico front desk.

“Jason Gideon?” a voice asked from the right. A short woman with red hair in a bun, glasses larger than Garcia’s and a black suit stood there holding a clipboard and white feather quill. She certainly didn’t look like St. Peter.

“Err, yes?” he asked, a tiny bit bewildered.

“You have quite a lot of thanks here,” she eyed the clipboard for a second, “But we have to get things done before you can go through. A ‘Frank Breitkopf’ to see you?” When she saw his disapproving face, she sighed and tilted her head to the side. “You have to speak to him before you go through. Demons aren’t allowed.”

Frank was sitting on a chair, his right leg over his left, fingers arched and smiling nastily. Gideon made his way up and tried to keep a neutral expression.

“Missed you, Jason,” Frank said, “Hell just isn’t the same without hearing about all the serial killers you’ve stopped.”

“You frightened my team half to death,” Gideon replied, “It’s a miracle they even recovered.”

Frank held his hands up. “Everyone has different ways. Anyway, goodbye Jason.”

“Goodbye Frank.”

Gideon turned and followed the woman through the archway, letting himself be released from all pain.


End file.
